4:10 am.
The clock blinks it bright and the alarm blares it loud, and it's entirely too early for normal human beings to leave their tangled blankets and face the not-yet-lit world.
Fifty questions.
The top of the test says it, and life will ask many more questions -- many harder questions -- than these fifty, but somehow those fifty small questions claim hours upon hours of life in preparation for their asking.
Seven days.
The turning of the planner pages taunts that it's been a week -- one hundred and sixty-eight hours, ten thousand and eighty minutes, six hundred and four thousand, eight hundred seconds -- and it's Sunday again and the Bible is still in the same bag it was put in for church last Sunday.
But you can't just jump back into it, can you?
After you've let the busyness spin your sanity further out of reach than it normally is, after morning devotionals are missed more often than they're not, after prayer stagnates -- can you just start back up?
Don't you need some sort of powerful revelation? A "come-to-Jesus" moment, as it were, a really good worship song, a rock-bottom breakdown?
As though somehow I'd "lost" Jesus, misplaced Him, stuck Him in a dusty corner where He needs to be coddled to come out.
But where do I start?
When you've read the entire Bible cover-to-cover more than once, how do you remind yourself that this isn't a normal book, that the words are alive and are life, that the thousandth time you read it is the thousandth time that piece of truth is pressed into your soul -- and that no matter how well you think you know it, you desperately need it pressed in just one more time?
How do you convince yourself that this is one Book in the world you can open anywhere, no matter where you left off, no matter how many times you've read that part or not read it? How do you teach yourself to not feel guilty for loving some parts a little harder, clinging to some portions a little more strongly than the others?
But does He still remember me?
Have I become less of a Christian? Is there such a thing? Do I need to start over, re-pray "the prayer," "rededicate," walk down the proverbial aisle once more?
Can He whose love is fiercer than death have His love shaken by my closed Bible?
Never.
Perhaps I remember it a little less, but if neither death nor life, angels nor demons, present nor future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation can separate us, somehow I don't think my faltering devotionals breaks that bond.
4:00 am.
If that's what it takes.
One question.
Where do your priorities lie?
Seven days.
Each one a chance to start over, without having to go back to square one.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Servant King
"Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power, and that He had come from God and was returning to God; so He got up from the meal…wrapped a towel around His waist…and began to wash His disciples feet."
The feet are dusty. They have trekked many miles in pursuit of the Master. They are calloused and wrinkled, tanned and roughened. They smell. Maybe John or Andrew had especially ticklish feet, and they couldn't help but break the intensity of the moment with a suppressed giggle.
But their faces soon melt. Tears track down their leathery cheeks and gather in their beards as they see their Master, a mere thirty-three years old, kneeling and taking in His hands the feet that have left all to be covered in the same dirt that cakes His own.
I wonder if He thought about the nails that would pierce His feet mere hours later. Did He whisper a prayer of thanks to the Father for this beautiful, ridiculous, messy plan of redemption that would save His disciples from the searing pain of the nails as they tore through flesh and bone?
Simon Peter draws his feet away, leaving that peculiar loving ache in the heart of the Savior; He is especially fond of Peter, just as He is uniquely and especially fond of each of the others. "Lord," Peter stammers, "are You going to wash my feet?"
Did the tears spill over? "You don't understand now," He tells him, "but one day you will."
"No," Peter shakes his head, hanging it, acutely aware that he is unworthy. "You shall never wash my feet." Yet when told that unless he is washed -- unless he allows his Master, Teacher, his Lord, his dearest Friend to bend and serve him -- he has no part with Jesus, he stretches out his arms, begging to be washed head to toe.
The Master smiles. Dear Peter, he does not understand. "You are clean," He assures him, then turns to His betrayer, "though not all of you."
He has known all along. From the moment Judas left everything to become His follower, He knew the man's heart. But that did not make it any easier, now that the time had come.
And the Messiah, having been given all power, having all things placed under His feet, knowing full well what the next twenty-four hours would bring -- even with all this, Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts, knelt that night to wash the feet of His betrayer.
The words He speaks are cryptic to the others, but they are not spoken maliciously. There is a deep anguish in His tone for the one who is lost, the one who is not chosen, for he did not choose aright. Yet Jesus rests, confident that the Father knows best, assured that He is in the best of hands. And so He kneels.
He knelt that night, and He kneels still, to wash the feet of the wayward daughter, the unworthy son. Everywhere His people bow their knees to follow in His steps and wash the feet of brothers and enemies alike. "Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me," He says, bending to serve you, taking your dirty and bleeding feet gently in His hands. He heals them, cleanses them, commissions them; the feet washed by the Almighty are perfectly prepared for service. In that service they will be torn, and bruised, and scarred; but He waits, a towel around His waist, garbed as a servant, to show once more the full extent of His love; to love you, who are His own, until the last.
(read the whole story in John 13)
The feet are dusty. They have trekked many miles in pursuit of the Master. They are calloused and wrinkled, tanned and roughened. They smell. Maybe John or Andrew had especially ticklish feet, and they couldn't help but break the intensity of the moment with a suppressed giggle.
But their faces soon melt. Tears track down their leathery cheeks and gather in their beards as they see their Master, a mere thirty-three years old, kneeling and taking in His hands the feet that have left all to be covered in the same dirt that cakes His own.
I wonder if He thought about the nails that would pierce His feet mere hours later. Did He whisper a prayer of thanks to the Father for this beautiful, ridiculous, messy plan of redemption that would save His disciples from the searing pain of the nails as they tore through flesh and bone?
Simon Peter draws his feet away, leaving that peculiar loving ache in the heart of the Savior; He is especially fond of Peter, just as He is uniquely and especially fond of each of the others. "Lord," Peter stammers, "are You going to wash my feet?"
Did the tears spill over? "You don't understand now," He tells him, "but one day you will."
"No," Peter shakes his head, hanging it, acutely aware that he is unworthy. "You shall never wash my feet." Yet when told that unless he is washed -- unless he allows his Master, Teacher, his Lord, his dearest Friend to bend and serve him -- he has no part with Jesus, he stretches out his arms, begging to be washed head to toe.
The Master smiles. Dear Peter, he does not understand. "You are clean," He assures him, then turns to His betrayer, "though not all of you."
He has known all along. From the moment Judas left everything to become His follower, He knew the man's heart. But that did not make it any easier, now that the time had come.
And the Messiah, having been given all power, having all things placed under His feet, knowing full well what the next twenty-four hours would bring -- even with all this, Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts, knelt that night to wash the feet of His betrayer.
The words He speaks are cryptic to the others, but they are not spoken maliciously. There is a deep anguish in His tone for the one who is lost, the one who is not chosen, for he did not choose aright. Yet Jesus rests, confident that the Father knows best, assured that He is in the best of hands. And so He kneels.
He knelt that night, and He kneels still, to wash the feet of the wayward daughter, the unworthy son. Everywhere His people bow their knees to follow in His steps and wash the feet of brothers and enemies alike. "Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me," He says, bending to serve you, taking your dirty and bleeding feet gently in His hands. He heals them, cleanses them, commissions them; the feet washed by the Almighty are perfectly prepared for service. In that service they will be torn, and bruised, and scarred; but He waits, a towel around His waist, garbed as a servant, to show once more the full extent of His love; to love you, who are His own, until the last.
(read the whole story in John 13)
Friday, July 4, 2014
Lost and Found
One time I got lost in church.
I was five years old and shipped off to children's church to have fun and learn about Jesus and do some crafts. Instead, I got horribly, horribly confused when we broke up into our smaller age groups. I guess I just followed a crowd of nice-looking kids, because I ended up in a classroom that wasn't my classroom, with a teacher who wasn't my teacher, doing some paper-weaving craft to make a "basket" for Moses. My basket for the boy who would grow up to take part in the splitting of the Red Sea was, of course, pink and purple.
And then the parents started coming and my parents didn't come, which for a little one is about the equivalent of the solar apocalypse.
Of course a Sunday school building is, in reality, much smaller than it appears to five-year-old eyes, and my mommy and daddy found me eventually (after I had cried my eyes out). I was whisked off in our van, safe and sound, with the promise of green mint ice cream to make up for the trauma of this misadventure.
Sixteen years later, I don't remember ANY other days in that Sunday school building. But I have very vivid flashes of the day I got lost.
It doesn't feel good, being lost. You know someone has to be looking for you -- they have to be -- well, don't they? -- but you have no idea if or when they'll find you. A once-safe place suddenly looms large and feels rather threatening when you're lost inside of it. The kind, well-meaning people who stay with you until you are found are clearly heaven-sent angels, but even they can only do so much against the huge, shapeless terror that is the word lost.
One time Jesus got lost in church.
Annual family vacation up to Jerusalem, and they left without Jesus. It took them a whole day for them to notice He was missing (how many times does it take us much longer than that?), and three more days to actually find Him (poor Mary).
And here's twelve-year-old Jesus, whom they probably expect to be huddled in a corner somewhere crying, confused, feeling downright lost. And instead, He's chillin' in the the church and says, "Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"
Naturally that didn't go over so well with His frantic parents.
I don't know if Jesus planned to stay behind, or just got so caught up in being in His Father's house that He missed the caravan. Whatever the reason, and despite what His family thought, He was never lost at all.
And in Christ, the same goes for us.
"If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,' even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You." | Psalm 139:11-12
Surely I've gone beyond anyone's reach.
Surely this darkness is too dark for anyone to see me.
Surely this time I'm too far, too hidden, too lost.
Whether the darkness is of our own creation, or we were dragged into it kicking and screaming; whether we are lost because we wandered off the path, or because those who walked with us suddenly left, or because some dark shadow stole our map and our light and our breath; we are not, in truth, lost. Not to Him who sees in the dark and guides the blind. He sees us clawing about, and He isn't baffled. He created light out of nothing; who are we to think that our darkness is too dark for Him?
"Even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast" (Psalm 139:10).
When our hand cannot hold on any longer; when our eyes cannot see more than an inch in front of our face; when we've wandered in circles and lost our true North, we are not lost to El Roi -- the God who sees. His hand holds us fast, and we can never really be lost at all.
"Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." | Isaiah 40:26
I was five years old and shipped off to children's church to have fun and learn about Jesus and do some crafts. Instead, I got horribly, horribly confused when we broke up into our smaller age groups. I guess I just followed a crowd of nice-looking kids, because I ended up in a classroom that wasn't my classroom, with a teacher who wasn't my teacher, doing some paper-weaving craft to make a "basket" for Moses. My basket for the boy who would grow up to take part in the splitting of the Red Sea was, of course, pink and purple.
And then the parents started coming and my parents didn't come, which for a little one is about the equivalent of the solar apocalypse.
Of course a Sunday school building is, in reality, much smaller than it appears to five-year-old eyes, and my mommy and daddy found me eventually (after I had cried my eyes out). I was whisked off in our van, safe and sound, with the promise of green mint ice cream to make up for the trauma of this misadventure.
Sixteen years later, I don't remember ANY other days in that Sunday school building. But I have very vivid flashes of the day I got lost.
It doesn't feel good, being lost. You know someone has to be looking for you -- they have to be -- well, don't they? -- but you have no idea if or when they'll find you. A once-safe place suddenly looms large and feels rather threatening when you're lost inside of it. The kind, well-meaning people who stay with you until you are found are clearly heaven-sent angels, but even they can only do so much against the huge, shapeless terror that is the word lost.
One time Jesus got lost in church.
Annual family vacation up to Jerusalem, and they left without Jesus. It took them a whole day for them to notice He was missing (how many times does it take us much longer than that?), and three more days to actually find Him (poor Mary).
And here's twelve-year-old Jesus, whom they probably expect to be huddled in a corner somewhere crying, confused, feeling downright lost. And instead, He's chillin' in the the church and says, "Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"
Naturally that didn't go over so well with His frantic parents.
I don't know if Jesus planned to stay behind, or just got so caught up in being in His Father's house that He missed the caravan. Whatever the reason, and despite what His family thought, He was never lost at all.
And in Christ, the same goes for us.
"If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,' even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You." | Psalm 139:11-12
Surely I've gone beyond anyone's reach.
Surely this darkness is too dark for anyone to see me.
Surely this time I'm too far, too hidden, too lost.
Whether the darkness is of our own creation, or we were dragged into it kicking and screaming; whether we are lost because we wandered off the path, or because those who walked with us suddenly left, or because some dark shadow stole our map and our light and our breath; we are not, in truth, lost. Not to Him who sees in the dark and guides the blind. He sees us clawing about, and He isn't baffled. He created light out of nothing; who are we to think that our darkness is too dark for Him?
"Even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast" (Psalm 139:10).
When our hand cannot hold on any longer; when our eyes cannot see more than an inch in front of our face; when we've wandered in circles and lost our true North, we are not lost to El Roi -- the God who sees. His hand holds us fast, and we can never really be lost at all.
"Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." | Isaiah 40:26
Friday, April 11, 2014
Immeasurably More
I'm not BFFs with my doctor.
I don't share my life secrets with the cashier.
I don't expect my friends to clean my teeth and I don't expect my dentist to remember my name without a chart.
There's these things called "social boundaries" and I'm not that great at observing them (I'm a pretty casual person), but I am aware of their existence. I'm aware of the different roles that people maintain in my life, and I try to not force those people out of their respective roles.
Maybe that's why over the past few months I wrote God a job description and forgot that He has about a million different roles that I was completely ignoring.
I don't have any problem admitting that I struggle with anxiety and panic. If you've read this blog for any amount of time you probably know that already, but just in case you didn't, I'll tell you: I struggle with fear in a more life-interrupting way than the average person.
In the approximately two years that this has been going on, I've probably talked to Jesus a lot more than I used to. But that wasn't healthy, because I only talked about one thing: My current problem.
Not that praying about fear (or whatever your major struggle is) is bad, but I almost think it made me dwell on the problem more. Has He answered my prayers anyway? Absolutely. I can point to several times that Jesus came through for me, conquered fear, made me courageous.
But I think all along He was looking at me with a confused look (though not a confused mind -- He is God, after all) saying, "Um, you know I'm here when you're not afraid…right?"
Here's a few problems I discovered with only "giving" God one job (more accurately, only taking advantage of one aspect of His character):
I directly related how well I was doing anxiety-wise with how well I loved Jesus.
If I was struggling, in my mind, it meant I didn't love Him as well right then. Because if I loved Him, I would trust Him. If I trusted Him, I wouldn't be afraid. And there we have the vicious cycle of Christians facing anxiety and depression -- in the time we are at our worst, in most need of closeness with Christ, we feel the most guilt and the most separation.
I directly related how well I was doing anxiety-wise with how well Jesus loved me.
Because Jesus was God of my fear and nothing else, if I had a particularly nasty amount of fear, He must not want to heal me. He must not love me. He must not want me to be free. Is it even worth it to ask His help? He must be angry that I'm scared right now -- so angry that He won't help me through it.
I lost sight of the whole picture.
Wanting God to only help me get through fear is like going to the doctor with all of your internal organs shutting down and only asking him to give you something for the pain. I can't find a single time in the Bible where He just made someone's death more comfortable; He brought them back to life. But what if someone had come to Him and simply said, "Would you please make my pain go away? You can leave the disease there, I just don't want to feel it anymore."
Jesus is here for more than just dealing with fear. He's here for more than dealing with my sin. He's here because I am His beloved, and His desire is for me (Song of Songs 7:10). He didn't have to make me. He didn't have to make people at all. He did it because He wanted someone in the world like me, and someone in the world like you, to love and cherish and be close to.
That relationship, that closeness, is what precedes courage.
I am more than my fear, and so is He.
I think, if I were to let Him out of the Fear-Conqueror box and just let Him be God and Friend and All-in-all to me, He'd be all that I need and so much more. If our conversations were about everything, instead of only about worry, worry would be on my mind less. And He would be on it more.
"Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." | Ephesians 3:20-21
I don't share my life secrets with the cashier.
I don't expect my friends to clean my teeth and I don't expect my dentist to remember my name without a chart.
There's these things called "social boundaries" and I'm not that great at observing them (I'm a pretty casual person), but I am aware of their existence. I'm aware of the different roles that people maintain in my life, and I try to not force those people out of their respective roles.
Maybe that's why over the past few months I wrote God a job description and forgot that He has about a million different roles that I was completely ignoring.
I don't have any problem admitting that I struggle with anxiety and panic. If you've read this blog for any amount of time you probably know that already, but just in case you didn't, I'll tell you: I struggle with fear in a more life-interrupting way than the average person.
In the approximately two years that this has been going on, I've probably talked to Jesus a lot more than I used to. But that wasn't healthy, because I only talked about one thing: My current problem.
Not that praying about fear (or whatever your major struggle is) is bad, but I almost think it made me dwell on the problem more. Has He answered my prayers anyway? Absolutely. I can point to several times that Jesus came through for me, conquered fear, made me courageous.
But I think all along He was looking at me with a confused look (though not a confused mind -- He is God, after all) saying, "Um, you know I'm here when you're not afraid…right?"
Here's a few problems I discovered with only "giving" God one job (more accurately, only taking advantage of one aspect of His character):
I directly related how well I was doing anxiety-wise with how well I loved Jesus.
If I was struggling, in my mind, it meant I didn't love Him as well right then. Because if I loved Him, I would trust Him. If I trusted Him, I wouldn't be afraid. And there we have the vicious cycle of Christians facing anxiety and depression -- in the time we are at our worst, in most need of closeness with Christ, we feel the most guilt and the most separation.
I directly related how well I was doing anxiety-wise with how well Jesus loved me.
Because Jesus was God of my fear and nothing else, if I had a particularly nasty amount of fear, He must not want to heal me. He must not love me. He must not want me to be free. Is it even worth it to ask His help? He must be angry that I'm scared right now -- so angry that He won't help me through it.
I lost sight of the whole picture.
Wanting God to only help me get through fear is like going to the doctor with all of your internal organs shutting down and only asking him to give you something for the pain. I can't find a single time in the Bible where He just made someone's death more comfortable; He brought them back to life. But what if someone had come to Him and simply said, "Would you please make my pain go away? You can leave the disease there, I just don't want to feel it anymore."
Jesus is here for more than just dealing with fear. He's here for more than dealing with my sin. He's here because I am His beloved, and His desire is for me (Song of Songs 7:10). He didn't have to make me. He didn't have to make people at all. He did it because He wanted someone in the world like me, and someone in the world like you, to love and cherish and be close to.
That relationship, that closeness, is what precedes courage.
I am more than my fear, and so is He.
I think, if I were to let Him out of the Fear-Conqueror box and just let Him be God and Friend and All-in-all to me, He'd be all that I need and so much more. If our conversations were about everything, instead of only about worry, worry would be on my mind less. And He would be on it more.
"Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." | Ephesians 3:20-21
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